Implementing Alternative Professional Learning
by: Erika Peña
in collaboration with Veronica Balli and Ileana Reyna
Introduction
Our innovation plan, Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education, was created to provide students the opportunity to engage in a student-centered learning environment with increased personalization and teacher-facilitated support. Our shared vision is for students to have the opportunity to become self-directed learners while increasing motivation and student achievement. In order to accomplish this goal, my collaborative team and I developed an implementation outline to guide us in successfully moving towards Blended Learning on our campus, Victor Fields Elementary. We plan to initially share our plan with our administration team in May 2022 and then present it to our K-5 Reading teachers in August 2022.
When developing our Professional Learning Plan, our objective was to create a significant learning environment for our Administration and K-5 Reading teachers, like we envision for our students. We understood that if we expected our teachers to invest their time in implementing a successful blended learning environment in their classrooms, our PL needed to replicate and model what it looks like and sounds like in order to engage their minds and capture their hearts.
Our PL Plan aims to deepen our teachers' knowledge of blended learning by fully submerging them in a differentiated learning environment, one that is tailored to their needs. Our learners, Administration and K-5 Reading Teachers, will actively participate in a blended learning environment that has been strategically planned by the Blended Learning Implementation Team (BLIT). The BLIT will implement 3 distinct station rotations in order to provide our learners with a personalized blended learning environment. Station One will be a BLIT led differentiated lesson based on each learner’s level of understanding. Station Two will be a self-directed learning station where learners will harness the power of technology and have a choice of which articles, videos, and readings they engage in. Lastly, Station Three will be a collaborative station where our Administrators and K-5 reading Teachers can engage in collaborative discussions about their new learning. This student-centered model will not only provide our learners with choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities, but will also increase their collaboration and critical thinking.
We wanted our K-5 Reading teachers to engage in this type of PL session so that they could understand that with blended learning they could “choose when, where, what, and/or how fast or slow they are learning and understand they have the power to pause, rewind, or fast-forward instruction based on their unique needs” (McLester, 2011). Our goal is that by the end of our initial PL session, our learners will not only have a deeper knowledge of blended learning, but also see the benefits of a blended learning environment because they were actively engaged in one.
Creating our PL Plan
Although most PL sessions we attend are modeled using the traditional “Sit & Get” approach, our sessions are not. That traditional approach would not have provided our learners with movement and discourse or active engagement that is essential for effective PL. Instead, the BLIT Team decided to created “Go & Show” PL, which encompasses the 5 Principles of Effective PD (Gulamhussein, 2013).
In order for the implementation of our innovation plan, Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education, to be successful and have sustainability, my colleagues and I must prepare our teachers with proper training, which includes active learning, collaboration, ongoing modeling, and coaching. We will use the duration of the 2022-2023 school year to actively model and support teachers with implementing blended learning to the best of our abilities. We will also foster self-directed learning for our teachers, by making all of our resource materials available on our Blended Learning Google Classroom. This will allow our teachers to view our course material before, during, and after each session.
Implementing Change PL Sessions
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Session 1 – Intro to Blended Learning 8/22
Agenda, Slide Deck Presentation, Prior Knowledge Google Form, Google Classroom Center Rotations, and
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Session 2 – Sample Poetry Blended Learning Lesson
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Session 3 – Exploring Blended Learning Application (iReady)
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Session 4 – Learning How to Learn, Culture & Collaboration
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Session 5 – Blended Learning & COVA Intro
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Session 6 – Blended Learning & CSLE Intro
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Session 7 - Blended Learning & Growth Mindset Intro
Below you will find the agenda, slide deck, and forms, that we will use for our first session: Introduction to Blended Learning.
Resources
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Center for Public Education.
Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf
Harapnuik, D., Thibodeaux, T., Cummings, C. (2018). Choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning [eBook].Creative Commons License.
http://tilisathibodeaux.com/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2019/04/COVA_eBook_Jan_2018.pdf
McLester, S. (2011, October). Building a blended learning program. District Administration, v47 n9, p40-42, 44, 46–48, 53 Oct 2011.https://eric.ed.gov/?
q=Building+a+Blended+Learning+Program+McLester%2c+Susan&id=EJ962531
5 Principles of Effective Professional Development
Principle 1: Duration
Principle 2: Support
Principle 3: Active Learning
Principle 4: Modeling
Principle 5: Content-Specific
Session 1: Intro To Blended Learning- Agenda
Our agenda includes our Learning Goals, Discussion Questions, and activities. Our activities include an ice breaker, a pre-quiz to assess prior knowledge, our Call to Action Video, and much more.
Session 1: Intro To Blended Learning- Pre-Quiz
This pre-quiz will assess teachers' prior knowledge of Blended Learning and will be pivotal in our rotations. They will recieve personalized and targeted instruction based on their level of knowledge.
Session 1: Intro To Blended Learning-Slide Deck
This slide deck is our introductory presentation that we will present to our staff. It follows the guidelines of effective powerpoint presentations. Most of the information is in the speaker notes, since the slides are just visuals and we are the ones presenting our knowledge.
Session 1: Intro To Blended Learning- Feedback Form
This post-quiz will provide us with feedback in order to gauge our learners knowledge and interest in the topic.
Session 1: Intro To Blended Learning
This is a visual of our Google Classroom. In order to see our resources and stations you must first join the Google Classroom. Code: 7hfwd5d